In this issue:

• This Week in Neo Tokyo: Meatbags Become Chads (by PhoenixxDown)

• Monthly NFT Recap: Uptober Edition (by Flower83)

• Where Are We in Web3's Adoption Cycle? (by CryptoTots)

It’s that time of year again! The 2023 Citadel Awards is your chance to vote for those who have excelled in 8 different categories. These range from best alpha caller, most helpful, who’s building the best game, and who’s been the best new recruit of this past year. Each winner will receive a $100 BYTE Platinum Reward, and voting will commence this week. Sadly I didn’t see “Most Prolific Tabloid Spicy Rubbish Merchant” on the list of categories there, so it’s another year of obscurity for myself.

Ellio has been dropping some fire on YouTube lately, and The Citadel got a big mention in his “This Is The Biggest Opportunity In Crypto!”video last week. Off the back of this, BYTES experienced a surge to $3, reminiscent of the good old days when YOLO'ing was all the rage at the mere mention of our native token. No, really, it was like the old days…..because the FOMOsapians only went and bought version 1.0 of BYTES instead of our new migrated token. Thanks CoinGecko, very cool!

However, not so long later, Firestorm confirmed that CoinMarketCap has now listed BYTES 2.0, which was a huge step forward for helping meatbags, who aren’t up to date on all the latest news here, accumulate their BYTES bags with confidence.

Another side effect from Ellio’s video was an influx of new blood into The Citadel. Some of those chads watching didn’t just buy some BYTES, nay! They took it up a notch by uploading their consciousness into our realm through the acquisition of S1s and S2s. Let's give a warm GR welcome to SnoopDoggMan, Jet, RebelliousByNature, and Fomotion, just to name a few. 

If you happen to see them around, be sure to make our new friends feel at home.

Another two who are well deserving of a big, beautiful GR are NT legends, MHL and pyromjm, who have been welcomed on to the Community Council team. As we all know, these two are among our finest and will undoubtedly serve The Citadel and all its residents exceptionally well.

As we begin to come to a close for this week, Firestorm shared an exciting update that will benefit citizens greatly. “Today we're launching Citizen Partners - a new tier system designed to offer our Citizens exclusive access to discounted products and services from fellow Citizen builders.” our Project Manager announced.

You can check out all the details here, including on how you can apply to become a Citizen Partner, and evaluate which tier of partnership best fits your application. Alternatively, if you missed it, you can catch up by listening to a recording of last night's Town Hall for information on this and all the latest updates from our departments and the broader spectrum of Neo Tokyo.

Finally, have you staked yet, ser? If you’re still on the fence, here’s a helpful staking tracker to look at, posted by systemguy. If you want to get an idea of how many BYTES you’ll be yielding by getting staked, you can make a copy of this sheet here to get an estimate.

Grand Rising, Citizens. And welcome to that special time of the month when we review everything that has transpired in the NFT space recently.

This month’s hot topics include:

• Uptober Living Up To Its Name

• Blur.io S2 Is Finally Ending

• Crypto Gaming Projects Take Off

• $MEME Token Launch

• A New #SocialFI Trend

We are so back. I honestly can't recall when was the last time that we had consecutive weeks of green price action. But here we are. Crypto pumped, and cleared local highs not seen in more than a year. Then, just like that, all the NFT degens are seemingly back in business as well.

Sure, the volume on the monthly time frame is still nowhere near previous all-time highs, but the numbers from this month still show a significant improvement from the last few months when it was even lower. Of course, its blur.io who’s leading the charge:

Next, let's take a look at the highest monthly sales:

Bear market, you say? How come people are still buying pixelated frogs for $1.8 million, alien punks for $700k and golden apes for $450k?

Yes, October has been a month of green that many of us have been waiting for quite a while now. But positive price action isn't the only bullish parameter, no. There have been many interesting developments in the NFT space lately: 

• Blur.io’s Season 2 ends on November 20th. 

• Amazon partnered with ImmutableX L2 chain to work together on shaping the future of gaming.

• y00ts migrate from Polygon to Ethereum.

• Shrapnel raises $20 million. 

• #SocialFI is trending, TVL on these platforms is rising, and many new FriendTech spinoffs are appearing, fighting over their own turn and trying to attract participants.

• 9GAG’s Memeland prepares to launch a $MEME token - one of the biggest launches in recent history. It will also be obtainable on Binance’s Launchpad.

• Chronoforge, a multiplayer action RPG releases “play test” of their upcoming game.

• Pixelmon launches their minigame “Kevin the Adventurer.”

• Layoffs happening at ProofXYZ(Moonbirds), YugaLabs & Polkadot.

• PayPal applied for an NFT marketplace patent.

• MagicEden introduces tokenization of digital collectibles (Pokemon cards). 

• ParallelTCG gets listed on Steam. 

• BigTime launches their preseason. 

For more in depth information on some of these topics, tune into our weekly NFT Market Monday space on X at Neo_Tokyo_News.

The dot-com era followed a four stage adoption cycle; pre-boom, boom, winter, and recovery. As we look at the emergence of web3, an obvious question arises: where are we in a similar cycle for Web3 in general?

In the pre-boom days of dot-com (mid to late 90s), internet infrastructure was still nascent but growing. Early e-commerce pioneers like Amazon were starting to gain traction and VC money began flowing in. Hype was building but fundamentals were still developing.

The boom hit in the late 90s as dot-com stocks soared to absurd valuations, speculation went into overdrive, and concepts far outpaced business realities before the inevitable bust.

After the bust in March of 2000 came a long shakeout where the vast majority of companies failed before recovery started. During that stage the resilience of the internet became clear as foundations strengthened for the likes of Google and Web 2.0.

For web3, there are echoes of the dot-com arc.

We've seen crypto cycles of hype and speculation, NFT mania, and lofty valuations detached from utility. This has led to busts but also more resilience in blockchain fundamentals.

However, in contrast to dot-com, web3's pace of innovation has been extraordinarily fast. Multiple crypto cycles have occurred already as concepts rapidly emerge and evolve.

But in terms of mass adoption and changing human behavior, web3 is likely still in a pre-boom stage (and maybe late pre-boom).

Infrastructure limitations exist, UX is poor, and killer apps are lacking. Valuations already seem disconnected from reality.

To answer when the boom will hit, we'd need to know the state of Web3 when the Bullrun happens.

If the infrastructure is well developed and we've solved major user experience issues and built "useful" utility, then it would be the boom. If the bullrun happens "too soon" then it won't be it, and I'd expect there to be one more crypto cycle before The Adoption Cycle.

I have a feeling that the next cycle would be the adoption cycle, but then again, I'm too deep into Web3 and could very well be biased here. Of course, that's just my subjective opinion as an insider - broader data on infrastructure maturity, user adoption, and other markers will reveal more insight on where we stand.

The next cycle may well spark the biggest boom yet for web3 and crypto. But the bust will be harsh if the foundations for real-world utility aren't built in time.

Just as patience and vision were needed to realize the internet's potential post-bust, a long-term perspective will allow web3 to deliver on its promise after the hype recedes.

All content from Neo Tokyo News is for entertainment purposes only, and not financial advice.

That’s it for our 20th edition of the Neo Tokyo Newsletter. Be sure to subscribe and share with your friends so you don’t miss out on future content.

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